“The Inuit and Laplanders eat vast amounts of meat and blubber and suffer no deleterious effects. Why?”

Harry said, “It’s not something I think about.”

“It’s what I’ve been thinking about all my life,” Matthias said. “I developed a theory, and I’m doing research. That’s all.”

“Further research into what?”

“Into where the finger of God is pushing us.”

“Pardon?” Harry said. “The finger of God?”

“Reverend Scaler preferred that phrase, which was fine. I lean toward a more historical perspective.”

“I’m listening,” I said.

Matthias walked across the room to a spreading areca palm. He touched the fronds, as if inspecting them.

“Near its beginning, the human race split into various tribes and went separate ways, geographically speaking. Over time, genetic positives and negatives arose in these separate populations. When disparate populations combine, it appears that the remediating, or, if you wish, the good genes, eventually triumph over the misfires.” He paused, showed a sad smile. “We are, in many ways, the cure for what ails us.”

“You’re saying that intermingling of these genetic pools results in…”

“Superior resistance to disease, which translates to better health and longer lives. Higher overall intelligence might result, and perhaps even more benefits. With the world shrinking, these tribes are coming together. Take a genetic union – marriage – between European and African genes; rare in this country until recently. But now?”

I shrugged. “No big deal, especially to younger folks.”

“The same applies on the West Coast, but, from a statistical point of view, more Asian genes are entering the gene-pool stew. A person from Japan or China might marry a person with a black father and a white mother. Or someone from Mexico or Central America. The offspring move to Minneapolis, marry Swedish-Germans. In human genetics, this is climbing toward betterment.”

I thought of a line from the poet Theodore Roethke about a lowly worm making its way up a winding staircase. Had Roethke been analogizing Humankind crawling up the spiraling staircase of DNA?

I said, “But there’s still much more to combine, right?”

“Polynesian genes, genotypes from the Indian subcontinent, Siberia, tribes along the Amazon, genes from peoples in Andean countries…the list goes on and on.”

“Tell me more about the couple and their child,” Harry said.

“I discovered them in Vancouver, a wide-stanced pair, genetically speaking. She’s Jewish and Oriental with significant ties to South American genetics. His lineage is Inuit and Scandinavian, Eastern Europe and sub-Saharan African just at the parent level. The child is a rainbow of genetic input.”

“You discovered this by cruising for hookers?” Harry asked.

Matthias sighed. “I seek out all manner of people for genetic samples. I swab mouths for DNA. It’s one metric to determine rapidity of genetic mingling. Port-city prostitutes mingle more widely than most.”

“Sailors from everywhere.”

“I saw Anak and Rebecca at a park, with the child. They looked interesting so I swabbed. When testing revealed the breadth of their genetic experience, I paid them to come here. I plan to put them to work in my new genetics lab. It was Reverend Scaler’s suggestion to keep the couple isolated for a few weeks.”

Just in case someone pried into the story before he told it his way, I figured.

“New lab in Mobile?”

“Part of a huge grant from Reverend Scaler – his generosity has been boundless. He called his sponsorship of my work part of his penance. I’d do the research and he’d explain it to people.”

“That project’s dead now, I take it?”

“Goodness, no. The money is in place. We met quite privately at an attorney’s office for the arrangements some weeks back. Not the usual attorney, I gathered, from all the secrecy.”

Carleton was cut out. Scaler was stepping fully away from his past. Carleton had felt Scaler slipping away, had high anxiety at losing a major client.

“How did you hook up with Richard Scaler?” I asked.

Matthias looked uncomfortable, cleared his throat. “Eight years back I did prototype research. I suggested if pure African genetics were bred out of existence, it would be a good thing. I was leading to the positives of broader genetic stances and could have said the same about Caucasians, Asians, Australian Aborigines…” Matthias looked disgusted and threw his hands in the air.

“You stirred up a hornet’s nest,” Harry said.

“People concentrated on the math, ignored the bottom line: When races disappear into one all-consuming genetic pool, we’re an improved evolutionary product. Instead, I got an immediate reputation as a racist, sentences from my paper used out of context. Drooling white-supremacist morons began quoting me.”

“Scaler called you to confirm his views on racial superiority?”

“Obviously his intent, to affirm life-long tenets. I said my research was in a final phase, that I’d send synopses in layman’s language. He asked for the scientific research as well.”

“What was his initial response to your research, given that it was the opposite of what he’d expected?”

“His first instinct was falling into rhetorical evasions, rationalizations, denials.”

“Just what I’d expect,” I said.

“But in the end, Detective, Richard was smart enough to realize he was wrong. I think he found great strength in order to face the mirror and declare himself incorrect. Mr Scaler was far smarter than people gave him credit for, by the way. A more enlightened upbringing might have given us a scientist.”

I looked at Harry. He’d suspected Scaler had more depth than the man presented. I’d viewed the Reverend almost as simplistically as Scaler had viewed the world for most of his life.

Matthias said, “My travels and sampling show a world moving rather well toward assimilation, my terms. Richard spoke of the finger of God. Of lost tribes gathering. To each his own.”

“How long will this assimilation take, Doctor?” Harry said.

“At current rates of genetic transfer? Thirty or forty generations. A thousand years or so.”

“Answer me this, Doc,” Harry said. “The child. Is she different than the rest of us?”

Matthias smiled. “The child is a single instance, and statistically insignificant, but I hope to find her discrete genetic strains have canceled certain harmful genes in favor of positive ones. She should be a rather healthy child. That’s about all.”

I thought of all the doctors and nurses amazed by Noelle’s resistance to infection. Then I thought of Mr Mix-up, Ms Best’s poor doomed pooch.

I said, “Noelle’s as healthy as a mongrel dog.”

“Odd analogy,” Matthias said. “But it has merit.”

We arranged to meet with Matthias in the morning when things were less chaotic. Harry and I returned to the car. He put the car in gear and pulled away, shaking his head in disbelief.

“It appears that instead of fighting, your average warring tribes should be…”

I held up my hands, making an O with my left thumb and forefinger, poking through with my right forefinger.

“Make Love, Not War,” I said. “The hippies were right.”

“Imagine what Meltzer thought when he heard of Matthias’s research via the ever-vigilant Patricia Scaler.”

“Race mixing is good? In an eye-blink, everything the white supremacists ever stood for is wrong. It would cost him adoration. He didn’t give a damn about anything but the symbolic kid. So he went after her. Twice.”

Harry thought about my words for a couple of miles.

“It doesn’t fit, Carson. Why not use Douthitt again? He hadn’t been compromised by Bailes. Why didn’t Meltzer keep using Douthitt as his eyes in the hospital?”

I shook my head, perplexed. Harry drove a mile. I saw his hand tighten on the wheel. “Jesus, Carson, what if two camps were trying to grab Noelle?”